All posts by : Jessica

Now that we have bonded the bridge deck together, it’s time to glass all 50 feet of the inside seam. There’s multiple steps involved, including making sure all parts of the seam which did not have our methacrylate bonding agent push through, get a bit of thickened resin pushed inside. From there we cove any open spaces in the flange and wait for that to get tacky before we can add our fiberglass.

The seam receives two layers of 1208 fiberglass, with a bottom layer of 150 mm, and another layer of 100 mm covering it. To get this seam as smooth as possible, it receives a good coating of resin, and then has all air bubbles rolled out with a fin/metal roller. The last step is to apply Peel Ply cloth, which leaves for a fare/smooth surface, and also helps to push out the last of the air bubbles.

The next day, once all of this has cured, the two of us tackle the task of lifting the 38 ft hull sides up in the air. We do this so we have a better opportunity to level the hull before it receives 5 strips of unidriectional fiberglass from one hull to the other. (This prepares the areas for bulkheads ) Once in place, it will be nearly impossible to make adjustments to the hull.

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

This is the moment we officially become a catamaran!!

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We hope you enjoy this week’s episode where we bond the bridge deck to the hulks with our methacrylate adhesive. To do the job we invite our Patron John and his son Jacob, where we keep the ability to lower the deck at the same pace.

Matt-Gyver has set up a system of four jack stands on the four corners of the deck, and by twisting the handles, we can raise or lower the deck at the same pace. But with a 40 minute clock counting down, can we do it in time?

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

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Now that our inner hull piece has been attached with the methacrylate, it’s time to strengthen that seam by glassing the interior flange.

To start off this week, Matt and I go about strengthening the seam to the inner hull. This is where we had just bonded with the methacrylate, and the next step is going through to glass the interior. It will make the area incredibly strong, and leave us with no worries while we’re out sailing the high seas.

The fiberglass we’re using is 1208 – with a chop strand mat to the back, which we received from Griffco Products.

**Enter code 10MJSAILING for 10% off your order! Valid from 05/20/2021 through 06/19/2021. **

https://www.amazon.com/gp/mpc/A30B0H6….

We also answer one big question in the Q&A, which is – “When are you getting the second container?”.

So settle in and enjoy!!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

We’ve finally done it!! We’ve made our first bond with methacryalte! Not much from keeping us being a floating catamaran now!

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We hope you enjoy this week’s episode where we make our very first bonds with our methacrylate adhesive. Matt and I had been preparing for days and days, but when it came down to it, we realized we didn’t want to do it on our own. So we brought our friends and fellow Patrons, Brian and Summer to help with the job.

We ended up being SO happy for the extra help, and everything came together so well. Make sure to take a look and check it out for yourself!

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

We have a treat for you with our newest episode – and the great news that our Methacrylate has arrived! Now this means we can permanently bond our hull pieces together!

Before we get ourselves to the point of no return though, we need to figure out a way to suspend the panels to clean them up as well as get the bonding agent on before they’re placed onto the hull. Starting small, we decide to work the forward inner hull pieces first since they only weight about 150 pounds (75 kg) each.

So sit back and join us for this episode where Matt once again ‘MacGyver’s’ his way through a situation with what we have on hand in the tent.

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

We hope you’re ready for the second installment of this episode (remember, there’s no additional charge on this!!) as we get busy once again with unidirectional fiberglass.

After the mess we got ourselves into last time – now we’re armed with a bit more knowledge. As well as plastic cable covers, which are going to make our lives much easier.

Since the unidirectional alone isn’t going to be enough to fill these areas though, once it is cured we also hit it with a mix of resin, cotton flock; silica; and 1/4″ chop strand fiberglass.

All that’s left to do now is bond the deck to the hulls so we can get these bad boys in place! We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

In Part 1 of this episode, Matt and I focus once more on bulkheads number 4 and 5. Now that we’ve cut out the areas where the doors will be, we need to go back and add a little strength. This comes in the form of adding three sheets of fiberglass to the tops of the bulkheads – two of the 0-90 biaxel, and one of the 45-45 double biased.

Lots of strength training for these bulkheads, but it will pay off loads for us later. 🙂

Stay tuned for Part 2 where we try once more to add unidirectional fiberglass to the troughs in the fiberglass.

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

With our MDF board properly measured and cut, we can now transfer that to our bulkheads to cut out three perfectly matching doors.

The two of us take the measurements on the bulkheads themselves to find the centerline – and from there, where the doors will sit at each end. Screwing the template into place, Matt uses his router to make a few passes, and presto, we have doors!

The plan had been to do some glassing on Bulkhead 5 as soon as we’d cut out the doors, but an unexpected storm and high humidity stopped us from getting that far. Luckily, Bulkhead 4, sitting up on the bridge deck, still had plenty of work to offer us for the afternoon.

We hope you enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

This week we move onto work with our bulkheads and run into one area that has us scratching our heads.

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Of course if we’re working on a project we know we might mess up – we want it to be in an area where no one will see. So with that in mind, we start work on bulkhead two, which will be up in our sail locker.

The few stages we have to get through are measuring out the cutout, and then strengthening the area with unidirectional fiberglass. It does not stay put in the routed out trough like we’d hoped…and so we resort to using clear packing tape to try and hold it in place until it cures. It’s a good thing there will be so many rounds of this ahead of us – eventually we’ll become pro’s at it!

Enjoy!

Much love from Annapolis!
Jessica, Matt & Georgie

We spend three more days working to get it back to the one piece it was when it was originally moulded in Vietnam. The underside of the hull went surprisingly easy, but then we had to deal with keeping the upswing even across both sides as we bond it together with our thickened vinyl ester. All goes well though, and other than being a little messy, we have a bridge deck that is all one piece! One project down, only a million more to go. 😉 We hope you enjoy! Much love from Annapolis! Jessica, Matt & Georgie